


Descent

by n2a0d0i0a



Series: Kageyama Rare Pair Week 2017 [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, Kageyama Tobio-centric, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 18:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9284786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n2a0d0i0a/pseuds/n2a0d0i0a
Summary: When he starts junior high, he doesn’t expect to fall in love.





	

The first time Kageyama remembers seeing the flowers is in his mother’s bed.  They’re gorgeous, dark and glittering against the lights in the room.  He touches a petal, lightly with the tip of his finger, and whispers that they’re beautiful.

 

His mother smiles, her gentle hand still playing with his hair.

 

“They are, aren’t they? They’re called pansies.”

 

He nods and snuggles further into her.  She coughs again and flowers cascade upon his head.  The warm, summer air is fluttering in from the window.  The sickeningly sweet scent of dozens of flowers floods the air.

 

“Why doesn’t dad like the flowers?”

 

His mother’s voice is as gentle as always, but he can feel the wet droplets hit his head with the weight of years of scorching pain.

 

“I don’t know Tobio.”

 

It’s the last thing she says to him.

* * *

 

He asks his grandmother about the flowers the next day.  She looks at him with a softness that is so similar to his mother’s that he almost cries.

 

“Every flower has a special meaning Tobio.  Your mother’s were pansy petals. That means she was remembering someone.”

 

He tilts his head to the side and asks her who she was remembering.  She just continues smiling at him and tells him to go find the other children.

 

His father introduces him to another woman a few weeks later, tells him that she will be staying with them and that he can ask her for anything he needs.  And Tobio finally thinks he knows what his mother was remembering.

 

He’s thirteen when he promises her that he will never end up like she did.

* * *

 

When he starts junior high, he doesn’t expect to fall in love.  But in the first few years he makes new friends.  Friends that he gets ice cream with after practice and laughs with as they walk home together.  He meets Kunimi, a boy with sleepy eyes and a calm voice whose fingers brush against his when they hang out.  They play volleyball together, and learn to trust each other.  Kunimi patiently helps him study and calms him down when he’s frustrated with practice. 

 

Kageyama doesn’t even know he’s fallen until his last year of junior high.  It comes to him one day when they’re walking home after practice.  Kindaichi had ran back home when his mom called so it’s just the two of them.  Kunimi’s as silent as always, listening to Kageyama talk about his plan to work on his toss, but he can feel the small smile on his own face.  And he knows, knows that this was the smile his mother had once given his father and he panics.

 

So he throws himself into volleyball.  Because he wants to be a champion.  He wants to win.  He wants to go to high school, grow up, make friends.  He doesn’t want to be like his mother.  _He doesn’t want to die._

 

And then, suddenly, he’s left alone, facing his teammates’ backs.  For a while, he thinks he’s done it.  He’s had to sacrifice volleyball, but there’s nobody left to love and he’s safe.  Then he gets home and something deep inside of him twists.  He coughs softly and when he looks at his hand he sees a single black petal lightly resting in it.  He recognizes it instantly.

* * *

 

The petals become a regular thing.  He spits out one or two every month, and moves on with his life, gaining hope that maybe he has a chance to live.  He has his teammates at Karasuno now.  They’ve helped him grow, made him stronger than he ever was before. He doesn’t need love anymore.  He can’t be killed by its flowers.

 

But then they see Seijou.  He sees his former teammates, witnesses just how well they are doing without him.  He sees Kunimi and thinks that his smile is the most hideous thing he’s ever seen.  He coughs and coughs that night.  Falls to the ground and internally begs for mercy.  The floor is a field of pansy petals.  They smell disgustingly sweet and he retches, watching with some sort of sick pleasure as they are tainted with his vomit and saliva.

 

From that point on, he continues in his painstaking descent.  His room is lined with garbage bags filled with flowers.  He can barely make it through practices now, nearly coughing his lungs out whenever he gets a minute alone.  He tries to hold it back when he’s with others, but it feels like he’s drowning.  He can feel every ounce of strength flowing from his body in a sea of petals that is the color of the night sky.

 

But he still dreams.  Dreams of a hand that held his own when he was frustrated.  Tossing to a teammate that he trusted to have his back.  Of sleepy yet strangely determined eyes.  Summers spent sharing ice cream.  The back of a familiar white and blue jersey.  He dreams of a smile that was never meant for him.

 

And, one night, when the summer wind blows in through the windows, he sits in his bed surrounded by the same petals that have haunted him for years now.  His father has left him alone once again, and the silence is almost peaceful.   He can smell the familiar, sweet scent of the flowers around him, and it makes him nauseous.  He knows in this moment that he’s broken his promise from so long ago, knows that this is the end.  He can hear his own shuddering breaths, but he wonders if it’s really him, wonders if he was ever anything but a medium for this disease to spread its lovely lies, wonders if this was his fate from the moment he was born.  Or maybe it was his destiny the moment he stepped into the gym and saw those slightly wilting, gorgeous eyes.  He reaches up to his face, wipes a familiar yet strange drop of water from his skin and lets out a strangled sob.

 

He wonders if his death will look as beautiful as his mother’s once had.

 


End file.
